From the mailbag --
I recently wrote to you about biblical flat earth; here is some further elaboration.
In the Secunda Secundae, q. 84, art. 3 (the reply to obj. 3), of the Summa, Saint Thomas mentions the location of the Garden of Immortality in the East as a reason for worship of God towards the East; the liturgical east thus has a connection to Eden. It is also fascinating how the words of the blessing of baptismal water in the liturgy of the Paschal Vigil are compatible with the view of Cosmas Indicopleustes according to which the water from Paradise goes underground and surfaces in four branches in the "middangeard" as the rivers Nile, Euphrates, Tigris and Ganges. The hand movement of the priest dividing the water represents the flowing of the water from Paradise to the four parts of the world.
Saint Thomas also mentions the ascending of Christ towards the East. This is important in the context of cosmographic aspects in architecture.
FE cosmography was used in pagan architecture; the ancient pagan cults corrupted the traditions of Noah our longfather, and biblical cosmography was part of those traditions, and so things like four corners of the earth were represented in temples of wickedness. By having their dark rituals perpetrated within and upon such structures, the demons wanted to represent their pretense of dominance over the four corners of the earth. Also, ancient Mesopotamian tyrants called themselves kings of the four corners of the world. The dark angels have also inserted cosmography in Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ, and some high degree masons (who speak to them through sorcery that they call "theurgy" like John Dee centuries ago) are aware of it; thirty third degree mason Albert Pike wrote the following in his book "Morals and Dogma": "The SQUARE is an instrument adapted for plane surfaces only, and therefore appropriate to Geometry, or measurement of the Earth, which appears to be, and was by the Ancients supposed to be, a plane."
The square was deemed a tool for geometrical measurement because the earth was a square plane.
But whereas the dark powers use cosmography to subvert it with satanism, the Temple of Jerusalem bore cosmographic aspects to set forth Messianic Prophecy; Christ would pass through the East Gate of the Temple, which represents the passing of Christ, at the Ascension, through the Eastern Gate of Heaven into the aetherial realm. The Temple represented the created world, and the Holy of Holies represented the aetherial heaven beyond the aerial (earthly) heaven and the solid firmament; the Lord Jesus has passed into that aetherial Holy of Holies to officiate as Priest before the Ancient of Days (biblical cosmography thus helps one understand Hebrews 8). The four corners of the altar represented the four corners of the earthly realm in which the Holy Sacrifice of the Cross has taken place. In the feria II infra Octavam Ascensionis in the old Breviary before the readings were reduced, in lectio 7, St. Gregory the Great distinguishes the aerial heaven from the aetherial heaven, speaking of Christ ascending into the aetherial one whereas Elias was merely taken up through the aerial heaven; the ancient men distinguished those two heavens; there was no copernican "space" between those two heavens.
Archeology even indicates that ordinary Israelite houses were built according to biblical cosmography, having their doors on the east sides. There is an article about this on "Biblical Archaeology" titled "Israelite Cosmology and the Orientation of Iron Age Houses" (21 november 2017) by Marek Dospěl. On the Madaba Map, the East and not the North is placed at the top.
The cupola in Byzantine architecture represents the circular firmament.
While it is possible to attach four corners to the zetetic FE version, by doing so you would get four southern corners, and that is not how the ancient Hebrews viewed the earth; each extremity of the earth represented one of the four cardinal directions.
Biblical cosmography also gives a clearer understanding of the New Heaven and the New Earth announced in the Book of Apocalypse, for in the end the solid firmament barrier and the luminaries will be removed, and the aetherial realm and the earthly realm will be converged; thus it will be the aetherial fire from above that will cleanse the earth, and in the renewed and transformed world the sun, moon and stars will be no more, and the Son of Man Himself will be its Light.
Regarding the course of the sun; the ancient Hebrews understood the sun to truly ascend in the East and descend in the West. In the Book of the Bee by Salomo of Akhlat (chapter 10 about the luminaries) a belief is mentioned according to which the sun after setting in the West returns to the East behind mountains in the North; this would mean that during summer solstice the sun is high enough above those mountains to be able to be seen during the night in the Arctic region.
In the Vitae Patrum there is a tale about three monks, Theophilus, Sergius and Hyginus, who go to seek the place at the end of the earth where the heaven (firmament) is conjoined to the earth; they find Saint Macarius near Paradise, but during their journey they find an inscription left by king Alexander; in the old Alexander stories king Alexander of the Greeks wanted to go where the heaven comes down to the earth. This shows that Cosmas Indicopleustes was not the only one to have believed that the Garden of Eden was beyond the vast ocean near the end of the firmament.
Regarding what I said about the Bering Strait; I meant that there is no transpacific travel (eastwards to the West and westwards to the East) as there is also no travel southwards to the North and northwards to the South; it is a lie to hide the Edenic continent where the firmament rests upon the walls of the earth (the foundations of heaven), beyond which there are the cosmic waters.
After the time of the church fathers an arestotelian globe earth geocentrism became the dominant opinion among the learned in the West, but it was in some aspects closer to FE than to the later copernican system because it involved a globe in the middle of seven concentric heaven-structures, one of those structures being the solid firmament separating the celestial ocean from the earth. Also, only the top of the globe was deemed to be inhabited (no antipodal habitations), which gave a notion of the cardinal directions not relativistic as in copernicanism. But it still involved a relativistic notion of up and down, placing the heavens both above and under men and Sheol; it also involved the horror of calling Sheol the center of the created world. It was a compromise between FE and a notion that originated in a pantheistic cosmology. Against the present pantheistic copernicanism that has poisoned and subverted the minds of multitudes the correct reaction is not to return to the old compromise, but to return to the ancient cosmology of Moses, who was not only Lawgiver but also Cosmographer.
Topic: Biblical Flat Earth (Read 14839 times)